The Dodge Journey has been found! Actually it was found a little over three hours ago from this writing, but I needed to take a break to entertain some guests! The Journey was in the Black Kettle National Grassland, a location prominently posted on the YouTube discussion board today. The actual location was between Strong City and Cheyenne, within a 25 mile radius of . . . you got it . . . Elk City, Okla. The vehicle was found before the final video clue ever aired on the YouTube site. When the video was posted, it was a coffee cup for Rebecca’s House of Coffee in Elk City. At that point, however, we only know that the Journey is within a 25-mile radius. A family from nearby Clinton drove away with the Dodge.

Interesting that the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City never appeared in any of today’s video clues, just the original ad (something to remember for next week when the Journey comes to the Northeast!).

As a side note, today was the busiest day on my blog since I started writing it three years ago. My first post on this contest, on Wednesday, garnered a huge response and broke records up to that point. The number of hits yesterday exceeded that record, and today the visits almost doubled. The four posts I’ve written about this contest (this one will be the fifth) are now the top four rated posts on the blog. A look at how people found The Off Ramp is also telling — they mostly came from search engines relating to the contest. This tells me several things:

tagging your posts is important so people will find you (always knew that in theory, but now I see it in practice)

there are a lot of other people out there like me who love a good road trip adventure, real or virtual

Dodge has done a great job of creating “buzz” (whether it translates into sales is another story)